Cheap Thrills

CARNIVAL RIDE. If you've got 8 bucks burning a hole in your pocket, the UA Steel Band wants to share some island sounds.

Selections for a concert Sunday include many tunes the band learned while in Trinidad last February for the Panorama steel band competitions and carnival festivals.

This concert also features the music of J.S. Bach, along with original pieces and arrangements by Trinidadian composers as well as other popular music and jazz numbers arranged by current and former members of the UA Steel Band.

The UA Steel Band program comprises three steel bands, each of which will be performing in the concert. The band is dedicated to the preservation and expansion of the steel pan art form. It plays many styles of music, several with Caribbean roots of soca, calypso and reggae, as well as classical, contemporary jazz, pop or whatever music the members think should earn the privilege of being interpreted on the steel pan.

Sunday's show starts at 7:30 p.m. in Crowder Hall, in the UA music building, at the south end of the pedestrian underpass on Speedway Boulevard east of Park Avenue. Tickets cost $8 general, $6 UA employees and seniors, and $4 students. Tickets are available through the UA Fine Arts box office, 621-1162. For more information, visit www.arts.arizona.edu/music.

GLOWING PICKLES. If you missed the recent "phun" night at the University of Arizona, here's another chance to get freaky with physics.

Head over to the Tucson Children's Museum on Friday, where organizers promise to make your hair stand on end. Demonstrations will help you understand "light saber" technology and rocket propulsion.

Oh, and of course, glowing pickles and liquid nitro ice cream also are on the menu.

ANOTHER WAVE OF TALENT. Poets are born, not made. Or maybe they're made, not born.

Whatever. Young poets do seem to get better--much better--at the University of Arizona.

The Visiting Poets and Writers reading series has long been an opportunity for the university's creative writing program to show off its brightest talents. Widely regarded alumni-poets such as Tony Hoagland, Li-Young Lee, David Rivard and David Wojahn have all read from their work as part of their tenure as graduate creative writing students.

This week's readings feature the works of Kathy Baily, David Murchison, Heather Nagami and Tim Peterson.

The free readings begin at 8 p.m. Wednesday in the UA Modern Languages auditorium, on the north side of the mall west of Cherry Avenue. For more information, call 626-3765 or visit www.coh.arizona.edu/poetry.